FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT YADAVS - PAGE 2

NEW DELHI: Curtains came down on campaigning for the fifth phase of assembly polls - covering five of the seven districts in Bundelkhand and the remaining part of central UP - on Tuesday evening, even as the four main contenders for the throne in Lucknow intensified their efforts to win the race. Winners to 49 assembly seats falling in Firozabad, Etah, Mainpuri, Etawah, Auraiya, Kanpur Dehat, Kanpur Nagar, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Hamirpur and Mahoba districts will be decided during this round of polling.

CHENNAI: No one seriously expects the People's Alliance, comprising dalit outfits in North and South Tamil Nadu, the Yadavs, the JD (United) and a Muslim unit, that was cobbled up in the run up to the May 10 elections in the state, to win any Lok Sabha seat in the state. However, the front's candidates may impact the voting pattern in constituencies, where the contests are close between the AIADMK-BJP alliance and the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA). People's Alliance was formed by forces who felt let down by DMK president, Mr M Karunanidhi.

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party, which appears determined to try its hand at effecting a consolidation of Backward Classes in Uttar Pradesh, has decided to stick with former BJP leader Kalyan Singh even if means a rupture in its ties with the Congress. SP leaders, who had a meeting with Mr Kalyan Singh here, consider the alliance with the former UP chief minister more critical to their political strategy for the state. There is a realisation in the SP that it is time a serious attempt was made to bring OBCs under one political tent.

PATNA: RJD chief Lalu Prasad would not have dreamt about such a dismal electoral performance. The man who once famously boasted that Jab tak rahega samose me aalu, tab tak rahega Bihar me Lalu now finds himself on the political margins. From the mighty political force he once was, he has been virtually reduced to a midget who may find it hard to recover from such a telling blow inflicted by the Nitish Kumar-led alliance. To add to his mortification, his wife Rabri Devi lost both the Yadav-dominated seats of Sonepur and Raghopur.

Post-Independent India had inherited the political and social umbrella platform represented by the Indian National Congress along with authentic regional political forces represented by the Akali Dal of Punjab, the National Conference (NC) of Jammu & Kashmir and the Dravdian movement and politics of Tamil Nadu. Not only this. The Communist Party and the Hindu Mahasabha had also been born in the 20th century, pre-independent India and they had contested the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections of 1952.

BADE MALHARA: The dusty hamlet, located some 55 km south of Chatarpur on the Jhansi-Sagar highway, could be mistaken for any other kasba dotting the landscape of north India. The road slicing through the middle of the town is full of potholes, with shops, most of them selling tractor and tube-well spares, lining the two sides of the stretch. People milling around the pan-shops and tea-vends are a common sight and, had it not been for the wall-writings exhorting voters to elect the 'Bundelkhand ki Beti' and BJP's chief ministerial candidate Uma Bharti, it would have remained part of just another constituency going to polls a little less than a week away.

NEW DELHI: The rise of Kammas, to which TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu and BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu belong, is different from the usual empowerment stories. Unlike the celebrated cases of the Yadavs of Bihar or the Jatavs of UP, it is a tale of a caste using its economic wealth to overcome the handicap of numbers and gain political power. The Kammas, who emerged as a dominant players in Andhra Pradesh ever since N T Rama Rao burst on to the political centrestage, comprise a paltry 6% of the state's population.

Trust the cruel system. All it takes is a few hours and a shove of the button to decide their political fate for the next five years. Team ET takes a ride through some of the star constituencies that go to the polls on April 20. So, jump in and enjoy. The biggest of 'em all, we know, is contesting from Gandhinagar. But despite Haren Pandya's father and some estranged saffron friends, Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani will have a smoother ride here than he had in the 30-odd days in his Swaraj Mazda chariot recently.

MUMBAI: You could say Aurangabad has been around forever: the city and its vicinity have been known from Buddhist and even earlier times. Just take a look at the cave temples of Ellora and the famous Kailash temple and they tell their own story. For a quick update: today, the region is being projected by the state government as an alternative to the industrialise triangle of western Maharashtra, Mumbai-Pune-Nashik. A quick trip through Aurangabad's history: till the Middle Ages, the city was ruled by the Yadavs, a powerful family whose rule extended over most of Maharashtra from their capital at Devgiri, now called Daulatabad.

Shining India is Shining, Bimaru Bharat is Bimaru and never the twain shall meet' could be one quick way of summing up the induction and jettisoning of D P Yadav by the BJP within a matter of days. The reality, however, is that neither is India all that shining, nor is Bimaru Bharat that Bimaru! And that the exit of one don from the centre-stage does not signify the beginning of the end of criminalisation of politics. The exit may give the middle-class electorate one reason less to vote against the BJP. However, there are dons and dons and dons still doing the rounds of the Indian political spectrum.